Writing Samples
My specialization as a game writer is character-driven worldbuilding. I make dynamic, immersive worlds through impactful, authentic dialogue.
These samples skew fantasy, but I can adapt to a range of styles and genres.
Bond Story Script
This script was written for Puzzle Legends, a narrative-heavy mobile gacha RPG that emphasized the bonds people share. Part of this was done through Bond Stories, sidequests where the protagonist deepened her friendship with one of the many heroes of the game - in this case, Keaton, the Queen’s young but stern bodyguard.
Ekphrasia
Ekphrasia is a Twine teaser and style test for my interactive novella by the same name. The project has been put on hold for now, but I'll get to it eventually!
Trigger warning for derealization, hallucination, and references to abuse and suicide. PG-13.
Perilous
Perilous is a Twine game made to demonstrate my ability to write branching paths. You play as Zid Whittaker, a thief on a mission to kill their abusive older brother.
TW for violence, injury, verbal abuse, implied physical abuse, and death. PG-13.
Short-Form: Faded Grove Barks
Context: Agatha, an elderly adventurer, encounters hostile, corrupt versions of once-friendly forest creatures in her childhood home.
Seeing enemies for the first time:
Are those… Atmas?! Goodness, what happened to them? Things are worse than I thought…
Defeating enemy for the first time:
I’m so sorry, little one. You left me no choice.
After player attacks (rare):
Down, boy!
Bad Atma. No biscuit.
Certainly not!
Oh, hush!
Really, the gall.
Stop this!
After defeating an enemy (rare):
I don’t understand. I WANT to understand.
Stay focused, Agatha.
There’ll be time to grieve later… I hope.
This is fine. Oh, blast, no it isn’t…
Please, no more!
Short-Form: Asteria Codex Entries
Context: In this text-based Discord Bot RPG, players will occasionally get a Discovery: a POI presented as a short block of text, which adds atmosphere and context to the world. These Discoveries are low-level, found in the game's second area.
Discovery: Seven Years' Bad Luck
This tower may only be challenging to a child, but you’re learning something. That something is to break every "mirror" you see. Those Magic Mirror things are tougher than they have any right to be, at least compared to other local foes, so you shouldn’t take any chances.
And you don’t. The next reflection you spot is webbed with cracks in an instant. But no arcane ooze seeps from the glass, and no purple smog hisses from the shards. In fact, there’s no sign of magic at all. You just broke a perfectly normal mirror, and everyone knows that’s a great way to curse yourself.
Best to pretend that never happened.
Discovery: Unsalvageable Armory
Darkness Sprites aren’t dangerous by any stretch, so you don’t bother fighting them unless they get right in your face. Just the same, you don’t bother fighting the small cluster of them you find gathered around something, instead waving them off to see what caught their interest.
It’s an Armed Skeleton! Well, it was, at some point. Now it’s bone shards and cracked gear, all glowing like embers from some other hero’s magic. No wonder the Darkness Sprites were interested, it’s warm and bright. Totally useless to a well-equipped Adventurer like yourself, though, given the sorry state of the arms and armaments.
Oh, well.
Discovery: Cavern Altar
Public altars to this god or that aren’t uncommon along well-traveled roads. Clerics and priests set them up for the common good of the Asterian people, and they’re used until they fall apart or are robbed.
That doesn’t mean you’d expect to find one in a cavern full of skeletons. Then again, here you are, standing before a makeshift altar to the martyr god Sombri.
A passing Paladin likely set it up. It would seem your peers have been been using it, leaving little offerings around the obsidian figurine. You consider it, then add a small bundle of rations to the pile. There’s no harm in honoring the Martyr, especially as an adventurer.
It’s not for you to know if Sombri accepted your offering. Time will tell. Still, as you depart, you feel a bit safer.
Bestiary: Pumpkinling
Silverkeep simply oozes magic, to such a potent degree that it is plagued by mimics of all sorts. A certain strain of that magic takes quite nicely to pumpkins. Thusly is the Silver City’s infamous pest created: the pumpkinling, a sentient hopping gourd that sings an otherworldly song and dines on any flesh it can scrounge up.
That may sound frightening, but pumpkinlings pose little threat. Most can be slain in one firm stomp! Just the same, while their dissonant song is unsettling, it holds no magic potent enough to affect sapient minds.
The Asterian Adventurers’ Guild is known to breed a specific, more lethal variety to train green Adventurers. This breed is kept strictly within the confines of the Training Bastion, with considerable fines imposed on those with the audacity to remove even a small piece. After all, a small piece is all it takes to grow a new one.
Personally, I think such thieves will get what’s coming to them in the form of a hungry newborn pumpkinling… but I digress.